Category: people

“The Inquirer‘s classical music critic from 1963 to 1999, Mr. Webster occupied his spot as Philadelphia commanded national and international attention through an orchestra that toured, recorded, and broadcast widely. … [His] era was bookended by artists like tenor Richard Tucker and conductor Hermann Scherchen in the 1960s, and the arts boom of the 1990s that created hundreds of millions of dollars in custom-built arts facilities and one of the most bustling music scenes in the country.”

Her most famous film performances were as Lois Lane opposite Christopher Reeve in the Superman franchise and as a lead in The Amityville Horror; she was also known for what she later called “the biggest nervous breakdown in history, bar possibly Vivien Leigh’s.”

In 1987, at the age of sixty, while walking down the street with Gwen Verdon—they were on their way to the opening of a revival of Sweet Charity—Fosse had a heart attack, his second. He died in the hospital emergency room. For his reputation’s sake, this was not a moment too soon.

“Alsop, dismissed as a dreamer by some, was eternally optimistic about the potential of architecture. ‘Architects are the only profession that actually deal in joy and delight,’ he had said. ‘All the others deal in doom and gloom.'”

Ramsey shot to viral fame on YouTube, got a deal with MTV, and worked on the “Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore.” That’s a lot, in a little bit of time. Now she’s ready to stop engaging as much online. “The internet contains a cacophony of voices, said Ms. Ramsey, adding: ‘If you want to be a creative in any field, at some point you have to stop listening to what everybody else is saying about what you’re doing and just do.'”

Mayer wouldn’t go into hiding after the Ayatollah Khomeni called for the deaths not only of Rushdie but of his publishers at Penguin. His point of view: “Once you say I won’t publish a book because someone doesn’t like it or someone threatens you, you’re finished. … Some other group will do the same thing, or the same group will do it more.”

That’s partly because he has learned, while writing screenplays for his films, to work with film directors who are also theatre directors. The author says, “A theater director is used to the idea of finding out what’s the best way of realizing the play. … They are very much more open, I think, to the idea of the screenwriter as an equal collaborator.”

“[Sophie Tucker] realized that because she was not traditionally beautiful, she could get away with a candor that other women could not. While her routines contained bawdy tales of sex and romance, she also incorporated material about her weight. …[And] in 1923, she wrote in the Los Angeles Times that she was hoping to organize a fat women’s club, explaining that she wanted to help women ‘laugh and eat without feeling conscience stricken.’ For Tucker, members of her club simply had to swear to see the ‘beauty of a double chin.'”

“An artist, teacher, and experimentally minded gallery owner who continued to make art after suffering a traumatic brain injury in 2010, … Bloodgood made abstract pieces that fracture and layer space with an offhand sophistication. They allude to Clyfford Still’s craggy patches of color, Brice Marden’s idiosyncratic lines, and Hans Hofmann and Joan Mitchell’s sparer and scrappier canvases.”

“[Françoise Hardy] learned she had lymphatic cancer in 2004; her health declined; and, in 2016, she was placed in a coma from which doctors thought she would never wake up. Against all odds, Ms. Hardy has returned and recovered her sensually adolescent voice, and her taste for writing.”